This lecture series was established by the British Academy and the Association of Social Anthropologists, and named after the Association’s first President, A R Radcliffe-Brown FBA. The lecture was first delivered in 1972.

The online open-access Journal of the British Academy seeks to publish a conspectus of the state of scholarship across the Academy’s disciplinary interests, its content derived from the Academy’s own lecture programme. Themed supplementary issues publish papers arising from the Academy’s own research programmes.

On 1 June 2011, Professor David Lowenthal FBA and Sir Simon Jenkins, Chairman of the National Trust, discussed why stewarding the past benefits the present and the future, and how we can protect, enliven, and enhance our heritage.

July 2012 saw the publication of the final report of ‘The Kay Review of UK Equity Markets and Long-Term Decision Making’. At a British Academy Forum in January 2012, Professor John Kay FBA queried the effectiveness of the financial services sector in satisfying the needs of the wider economy.

Dr Tomos Proffitt and Dr Alastair Key explore the origins of human technology, explaining the similarities between how monkeys have been observed turning rocks into stone tools and our own ancestors' early experiments.